Peter Tsouras: Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War

He was commanding a gunboat squadron on the Nansemond River in late April during the Suffolk campaign. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and his 1st Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia had been sent there to counter an expected Union offensive fueled by reinforcements. When the reinforcements were sent elsewhere, he converted his defensive mission to an offensive one to cut the communications of the twenty thousand Union troops in the Suffolk area. He had to cross the Nansemond to do it. On the morning of April 14, Lamson was taking the USS Mount Washington down the river to Suffolk when he was engaged by a Confederate battery at Norleet’s Point. The first enemy salvo blew up his boilers, and the ship began to drift ashore under heavy fire. Another of his vessels pulled him off the shore, only to ground the Mount Washington in crossing the bar. Another ten pieces of enemy artillery and hundreds of riflemen opened up at 11:00 AM. He fought them from his stationary position on the bar until 6:00 PM. He reported later thather boilers, cylinders, and steel drums pierced and ten shells went through the smoke pipe, and the rest of the machinery much damaged. Her pilot house riddled, wheelropes shot away, and her decks and bulwarks completely splintered, everyone who has seen her says there has not been another vessel so shot to pieces during the war. The flag-staff was shot away, and when the flag fell into the water, the rebs cheered exultingly; but they did not enjoy it for long before we had the dear old stars and stripes waving over us again, with everyone more determined than ever to fight them to the last timber of the vessel.

Followed by a master’s mate and seaman, Lamson climbed through the wreckage to the upper deck. They hauled up the flagstaff by the ensign halyards, raised and lashed it to the stump. He considered it a miracle that they all survived unscathed, only one of many miracles that seemed to fall on that ship amid the rebel shot and shell. “After the action was over, the sailors gathered around me on the deck, took hold of my hands and arms, threw their arms around me, and I saw tears starting from eyes that had looked the rebel battery in the face unflinchingly.”

The enemy had fared far worse. Ten of its guns had been smashed, and hundreds of the sharpshooters had been killed or wounded by the guns of the Mount Washington . More important, because of Lamson, Longstreet did not cross the Nansemond to fall like a wolf among the second-rate Union generals who cowered in fear of him. Lamson’s courage had stopped his plan dead in its tracks. With men like Lamson on the river, Longstreet would not chance the move.

The Secretary of the Navy wrote that the Service “is proud to see in the younger members of the corps such evidence of energy and gallantry, and execution and ability as scarcely surpassed by those of more age and experience.” 12The Nansemond was Lamson’s reward. He fitted her out himself at the Baltimore Navy Yard but was only able to find a small part of his needed crew, though they were the pick. When he reached the flagship of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, the large frigate Minnesota , he asked the captain for permission to recruit the men who had served with him on the Mount Washington . When he went to fetch them, half the frigate’s crew begged to be included. He took fifty, “as true blue jacket as ever walked a deck, and ten officers.” A hundred officers had applied for his ship. His executive, Benjamin Porter, was a treasure.

The Nansemond was as trim and well run as any ship that flew the Stars and Stripes, all shipshape and Bristol fashion, as the petty officers said. The old salts had already taken the measure of this young man and threw the weight of their goodwill on his side and set the tone for the ship. They whispered that he was Davy Farragut all over again and for good reason-he was Navy through and through. Lamson knew his job and everyone else’s. He was a teacher, vital in a navy that had ballooned from five thousand to fifty thousand men in two years. It did not take long for the word to spread that the Nansemond was a hale ship with a lucky captain who plucked fat prizes off the sea.

A good-looking but not striking young man, with his carefully combed and slicked-down black hair, Lamson looked younger than his years-something he did not appreciate when a captain’s maturity was a given attribute of his ability. He grew a mustache and a goatee to make him appear older. Officers and men did not seem to care. There was something about him that compelled a willing obedience, something hard to put your finger on. It went beyond his considerable competence. His presence seemed to generate a certain excitement in others who wanted to be around him. He was like an electric current that caused others to glow. He was also a fighter, and men follow such a man.

He was also lovesick. Every mail packet would carry a handful of his letters to his cousin and fiancée, Kate Buckingham. The ahoy had found him at his writing desk, where he had just had time to write, “Dear Kate, Again the Nansemond is dashing through the water, and Again on the deck I stand Of my own swift gliding craft ” 13before leaping through his cabin door and racing up the gangway to his quarterdeck.

Porter handed him the eyeglass. “The vessel is running offshore, a blockade-runner for sure.”

“Let’s give chase, Mr. Porter. Stand to intercept. We shall see what our new engines can do.”

The Nansemond leaped through the sea like a hunting dog on the scent. By noon, she had gained so much on the vessel that Lamson opened fire on the chase, and the shots fell just short. The sextant reading told him they were gaining, when a strong breeze from the southwest came up to whip the sea into heavy swells. The Nansemond slowed as the waves struck under her low guards, but the quarry suffered the same handicap as well. Lamson pressed on, straining his engines to close the distance. The next two hours saw him gain. The pursued began to throw cargo overboard to lighten its load, but the Nansemond continued to close until 3:50 PM when a shot from her bow gun shattered the vessel’s figurehead. The vessel came about to signal her surrender.

She was the Margaret and Jesse , seven hundred tons, registered in Charleston and bound for Wilmington from Nassau. Lamson sent two officers aboard to hoist the American flag. With a prize crew in control of the captured vessel, Lamson cut a course for the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Wilmington, and when everything was secure and under way, he returned to his cabin and picked up his pen to finish his letter to the fair Kate.

The next morning in the early light the ships swung in among the squadron. Lamson, at his breakfast, was interrupted by a knock on the cabin door. “Enter,” he said.

A tiny cabin boy, all of eleven years old, stood owl-eyed for few seconds until he blurted out, “Mr. Porter’s compliments, sir. Flagship signaling.”

Lamson put his breakfast aside and went topside, nodding at Mr. Porter as he scanned the squadron bobbing in the sea. Most were converted merchantships like the Nansemond , meant to run down blockade-runners. There was also a handful of the purpose-built, prewar, steam-driven warships. As powerful as the squadron was, Lamson knew its strength paled compared to that assembled under Adm. John Dahlgren’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston. Admiral Dahlgren had command of the Navy’s new iron fist, all eight of the new iron monitors. Riding low in the water with their great double-gunned turrets, the Passaic class monitors were a marvel rushed to production after last year’s great duel on in Hampton Roads between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia , but not a one of these wonders bobbed here off Wilmington.